55,618 research outputs found
Power system security enhancement by HVDC links using a closed-loop emergency control
In recent years, guaranteeing that large-scale interconnected systems operate safely, stably and economically has become a major and emergency issue. A number of high profile blackouts caused by cascading outages have focused attention on this issue. Embedded HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) links within a larger AC power system are known to act as a “firewall” against cascading disturbances and therefore, can effectively contribute in preventing blackouts. A good example is the 2003 blackout in USA and Canada, where the Québec grid was not affected due to its HVDC interconnection. In the literature, many works have studied the impact of HVDC on the power system stability, but very few examples exist in the area of its impact on the system security. This paper presents a control strategy for HVDC systems to increase their contribution to system security. A real-time closed-loop control scheme is used to modulate the DC power of HVDC links to alleviate AC system overloads and improve system security. Simulations carried out on a simplified model of the Hydro-Québec network show that the proposed method works well and can greatly improve system security during emergency situations.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio
Distributed Detection and Estimation in Wireless Sensor Networks
In this article we consider the problems of distributed detection and
estimation in wireless sensor networks. In the first part, we provide a general
framework aimed to show how an efficient design of a sensor network requires a
joint organization of in-network processing and communication. Then, we recall
the basic features of consensus algorithm, which is a basic tool to reach
globally optimal decisions through a distributed approach. The main part of the
paper starts addressing the distributed estimation problem. We show first an
entirely decentralized approach, where observations and estimations are
performed without the intervention of a fusion center. Then, we consider the
case where the estimation is performed at a fusion center, showing how to
allocate quantization bits and transmit powers in the links between the nodes
and the fusion center, in order to accommodate the requirement on the maximum
estimation variance, under a constraint on the global transmit power. We extend
the approach to the detection problem. Also in this case, we consider the
distributed approach, where every node can achieve a globally optimal decision,
and the case where the decision is taken at a central node. In the latter case,
we show how to allocate coding bits and transmit power in order to maximize the
detection probability, under constraints on the false alarm rate and the global
transmit power. Then, we generalize consensus algorithms illustrating a
distributed procedure that converges to the projection of the observation
vector onto a signal subspace. We then address the issue of energy consumption
in sensor networks, thus showing how to optimize the network topology in order
to minimize the energy necessary to achieve a global consensus. Finally, we
address the problem of matching the topology of the network to the graph
describing the statistical dependencies among the observed variables.Comment: 92 pages, 24 figures. To appear in E-Reference Signal Processing, R.
Chellapa and S. Theodoridis, Eds., Elsevier, 201
Network Kriging
Network service providers and customers are often concerned with aggregate
performance measures that span multiple network paths. Unfortunately, forming
such network-wide measures can be difficult, due to the issues of scale
involved. In particular, the number of paths grows too rapidly with the number
of endpoints to make exhaustive measurement practical. As a result, it is of
interest to explore the feasibility of methods that dramatically reduce the
number of paths measured in such situations while maintaining acceptable
accuracy.
We cast the problem as one of statistical prediction--in the spirit of the
so-called `kriging' problem in spatial statistics--and show that end-to-end
network properties may be accurately predicted in many cases using a
surprisingly small set of carefully chosen paths. More precisely, we formulate
a general framework for the prediction problem, propose a class of linear
predictors for standard quantities of interest (e.g., averages, totals,
differences) and show that linear algebraic methods of subset selection may be
used to effectively choose which paths to measure. We characterize the
performance of the resulting methods, both analytically and numerically. The
success of our methods derives from the low effective rank of routing matrices
as encountered in practice, which appears to be a new observation in its own
right with potentially broad implications on network measurement generally.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, single-space
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